Book picks similar to
Expendables by Alison Ingleby


young-adult
sci-fi
science-fiction
e-books

The Treemakers


Christina L. Rozelle - 2014
    Be aware of your surroundings. Notice the nuances. Cover your tracks. Always be prepared. Question everything. This is how you stay alive, Joy. And this is how you keep the ones you love alive.Sixteen-year-old Joy Montgomery, daughter of Zephyr the Magnificent, the great magician, can only reminisce of better times. Before the Superiors. Before the uprisings. Long ago. Before the dying Earth ripped the family she loved away from her. In this desolate dystopian future, the Greenleigh orphans are “privileged” with the task of building mechanical trees for Bygonne, so their world behind The Wall can breathe another day, and so the Superiors may continue their malevolent reign. Lured by a yearning for freedom, tenacious curiosity, and hunger for adventure, Joy discovers hope and magic amid the misery, and power in her promise to care for those remaining, whom she loves enough to risk her life for. To save them, herself, and the boy she adores from the abuse and slavery by the Superiors, Joy must entrust the aid of an unlikely ally who harbors a dangerous secret. With an intriguing stranger at the helm, Joy and the treemakers embark on an intense and terrifying, yet liberating quest for the truth about the existence of the forbidden paradise beyond The Wall. This is the first book in the Treemakers Trilogy. This series is intended for mature YA audiences, as there are certain mature themes (abuse, character deaths, etc.,) which may be too emotionally intense for younger readers.

The New World


Patrick Ness - 2010
    - Patrick Ness

Unstrung


Kendra C. Highley - 2014
    You don’t make a career out of stealing other people’s property without making enemies. When a risky job goes from bad to worse, Lexa and her adopted family find themselves on Precipice Corporation’s hit list because they’ve accidentally stolen the wrong thing—plans for a new model of genetically-engineered super humans. Now every bounty hunter, cop on the take, and snitch in the city is after them.Lexa’s world crumbles around her as she fights to keep her family safe even as someone strolls out of her forgotten past. Quinn says he knows who Lexa really is, but can she trust a stranger she met while robbing his boss? More importantly, does she really want to know what Quinn has to tell her?Based on the fairy tale Pinocchio, UNSTRUNG takes you into a near future world where the lines between fake and real are blurred, all that’s pristine isn’t always innocent, and being a criminal isn’t always wrong.

Bridge Daughter


Jim Nelson - 2016
    Hanna is a "bridge daughter" born pregnant with her parents' child. In a few months she will give birth and die, leaving her parents with their true child to raise. A mature bookworm who dreams of college and career, Hanna is determined to overcome her biological fate. Then Hanna learns of an illegal procedure that will allow her to live to adulthood...at the cost of the child's life.

Sundered


Shannon Mayer - 2011
    The side effects were anything but hopeful. Mara and Sebastian are young, in love and newlyweds. Far too soon, they will face tests to their love that most others won’t survive. Their bond strengthens with each loss, destruction and unbearable race against time. In each other, they find the will and hope to endure. Hand in hand, they will face the darkening of humanity with strength and integrity and an undeniable spirit to survive; together.

Reign of Blood


Alexia Purdy - 2012
    Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I'm just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise..."In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she's willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.

Clutch


J.A. Huss - 2012
    At the center of the search lies the Rural Republic; a small backwards farming country with high hopes of military domination and a penchant for illegal bioengineering. 19 year old Junco Coot is the daughter of the Rural Republic’s ranking commander. She’s the most foul-mouthed, wildly unpredictable and ruthless sniper the Rural Republic has ever trained. But when her father’s death sparks a trip into forbidden places, she triggers events that will change everything she knows to be true. As an elite avian military officer, Tier’s mission is to destroy the bioengineering projects, kill Commander Coot’s daughter, and return home immediately. There’s just one problem. Junco isn’t who she claims to be. With no one to trust, not even herself, Junco must confront the secrets of her past and accept her place in the future, or risk losing herself completely.

Testing Zero


N.G. Simsion - 2016
    Simsion. Zero prefers to keep his life simple. Although he is easily one of the largest and cleverest boys in his year, he runs from any sign of confrontation. His best friend—his only friend—is nothing like him. Obsessed with the world outside of the city walls, Lefty is always pushing the boundaries set by society's Elite. It’s only a matter of time before they have gone too far and they’re forced to face the horrors of the "old world" on their own. Can they survive and learn to coexist with the dangerous Remnants of the old world? Are the Remnants of the old world even the worst of their problems, or do the Elite of their own society pose an even greater threat?

The Sixth Discipline


Carmen Webster Buxton - 2011
    He thinks he's prepared for any danger the forest might hold, but his skills prove useless when he's caught in a hi-tech trap. Soon Ran-Del finds himself in a city so alien it might as well be another world—machines speak, vehicles fly, and his captors' weapons can inflict pain without touching him. Every time Ran-Del tries to escape, he's foiled by a technology he doesn't understand. As terrifying as the city is, his kidnapper, the enigmatic Baron Hayden, exudes a jovial affability that worries the Sansoussy even more. What can such a powerful man want with a Sansoussy warrior, who can neither read nor write and knows nothing of city ways? The Baron's daughter Francesca clearly knows more than she's saying, but Ran-Del's psy sense tells him only she's being truthful, not what she's thinking. And it's only after it seems that Ran-Del has escaped the city and its dangers, that he finds out how thoroughly he has been caught.

After the Winter


Mark R. Healy - 2014
    Cities and nations destroyed. Those who survive the onslaught succumb to the cold blackness of winter. A handful of machines finally emerge into the light, lost and directionless. They are the last remnants of civilisation.Brant is a synthetic - a machine who has the appearance and emotions of the humans who made him. He is hunted across the wasteland by cruel scavengers known as Marauders who are intent on cannibalising his body to prolong their own lives.Brant carries a great burden as he tries to return home: a secret that can change the world. Against the unforgiving desert, the twisted denizens of this new world and his own dark past he needs to find a way back at any cost.

Curse of the Immune


Levi Doone - 2015
    Every human over the age of seventeen has perished Lea and Luke survived the disease. Her twin brother left to find his girlfriend. Her foster parents rise and attack. The undead are everywhere and Lea does the only thing she can. She runs She runs from danger and into the grasp of certain death. Clumsy, panic stricken, and barefoot Lea leads a chase that brings her to other survivors. She notices that all the survivors are young. It’s up to the kids of the apocalypse to fend for themselves. Enter Rudy He knows how to survive. He is Lea’s age. He is handsome. As she struggles to find her brother in a world of death can love still sprout? The Surviving Young Series It’s a journey of teenagers and younger children finding a way to endure in an undead world and from other groups who seek their destruction. Read the complete six book series

GAMELAND Episodes 1-2


Saul W. Tanpepper - 2012
    and 10,000 Undead. Everyone loves Survivalist, a live-action, virtual reality show based on Arc Entertainment's The Game, where cybernetically controlled zombies do battle in a video arcade in the middle of a Long Island wasteland. It's to die for.If you're rich enough, you can buy your way in. If you're desperate enough, you can volunteer to become one of the Undead Players. Jessie Daniels and her gang of computer hackers plan to break their way in.Welcome to GAMELAND. Access Restricted.EPISODE 1: Deep Into The GameA reckless, end-of-summer plan leads Jessie and her friends onto Long Island hoping to catch a glimpse of the infected victims of a decades-old outbreak. But while breaking in might be easy, getting back out is a hell of a killer. It doesn't take long before they realize they're part of The Game.EPISODE 2: FailsafeJessie and Kelly clash after one of their group gets stranded among the Infected Undead, forcing Kelly to make a rash decision which will ultimately deliver them into the hands of those who would turn them all into mindless players in The Game.

Echo Among Stars


JoAnna S. Morris - 2015
    Under the rule of The Renegades, and their tyrant leader Cesar, every aspect of life is controlled. Streets are patrolled by humanoid Enforcers. Necessities are rationed. Disobedience is not tolerated. When Eden receives an omen, and joins a group of Rebels led by the alluring Leo Dillon, her life begins to unravel. Just as the Rebels are beginning to understand what they are capable of Cesar has kidnapped their families forcing them to strike before they are ready. Once inside the Empyrean palace they discover the horror of what they are truly facing. Does Eden have what it takes to be the legend she was destined to be? Ready or not she's about to find out...

One Word Kill


Mark Lawrence - 2019
    And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.Challenge accepted.

Floor 21


Jason Luthor - 2015
    Intelligent and unyielding, Jackie ventures into the shadows of the floors below. But will her strong will and refusal to be quiet—in a society whose greatest pride is hiding the past—bring understanding of how humanity became trapped in the tower she has always called home, or will it simply be her undoing?